Initializing...

Razer paced the lobby anxious; his group should’ve been
online an hour ago. His real name wasn’t Razer, it was Tobias Reynolds. Razer
was his username for the Wire. He glanced around the lobby; there were crowds
of people flocking towards the newly installed game. Razer threw it a quick
glance, the queue was over one thousand players so he decided to go to one of
his all-time favourite mini-games, Extreme Off-roader. He signed in and
selected his car. It was a raised four-wheel drive with a massive plough on the
front. The aim of the game was to drive as far you could through the
zombie-infested streets without them destroying your vehicle. Razer’s
notifications beeped, someone wanted to challenge him to a race. Perfect, he
thought, no better way to earn credits than to smash some newbies in Extreme
Off-roader. He accepted the invite and braced himself as the countdown begun.
5…. he took a glance at his opponent’s car; it was a small sedan with extra
iron plating to protect it from zombies. 4…. He purchased ammo for his weapons.
3… the challenger made a gesture through the reinforced window of his car. 2… Razer
gestured back. 1… the challenger revved his car, flames forking out the exhaust
pipe. GO! Razer slammed his foot to the pedal and they were off. Flying down
the cracked bitumen, buildings were crumpling to the ground around them.
Suddenly a hunter zombie leapt onto the hood of Razer’s car, it fists pounded
on the windscreen. Razer took out his shotgun and aimed it at the zombie through
the hatch in the roof. BOOM! The hunter flew off, spraying the windscreen with
yellow goo. He glanced at his opponent; he was struggling to dislodge a zombie
from in-between the iron plating. Razer grinned and pushed the boost button on
his dashboard. The virtual G-force pushed him back into his seat; he loved this
part of the Wire, because sometimes it really did feel real. Razer’s visor
blinked, he had a missile locked onto his vehicle. That was one the rules of
this game, there weren’t any rules once you started racing. Razer frantically
searched for another particular button. He found it and pressed it’ a large
sentry-gun rose from the tray of his car and fired the missile out of the sky. Razer
grinned as he crossed the finish line, his opponent cursing crazily in his
headset. Razer took his rewards and headed back to the lobby. Razer checked his
friend’s list, Neo and Xara were online, their location was at Gus’s
Cyber-Café. He headed over in the direction of the café, stopping at an ATM to
withdraw some credits from his account. When he got the café he greeted Gus,
who offered Razer a free thick-shake. Razer checked his hunger bar and took it
gratefully. That last game had taken down almost half of his hunger. He walked
over to the table where Neo and Xara sat.

“How you guys going?” he asked.

Xara flicked her blonde hair behind her back, Razer had to
admit that she’d done a great job creating her avatar.

“I’m great now that you’re here,” She said, flirtatiously. “Neo
was boring me to death with his lecture on how to get quick XP on Knights of
the Dungeon.”

Neo shrugged defensively, “It’s the game everyone’s talking
about, so I thought I’d share my knowledge on the subject.”

Razer grinned, “You’re such a nerd Neo. You know chicks
aren’t as interested in games as us.”

This time Xara get defensive, “Excuse me, but I love games,
just not creepy little dungeon explorer games. I prefer to test my skills in
other stuff, like racing games.”

Razer was growing impatient, “Are we gonna test out the new
game? It’s not the dungeon one, I was
snooping around the background datastreams and I came across a new game, kinda
like Knights of the Dungeon except that it’s not based in dungeons, its open
world, got customizable characters and everything and, here’s the best part,
we’ll be the first ones in the world to play it, so u guys wanna do it?” Neo
eagerly nodded his head.

Xara wasn’t so sure, “Will we get in trouble?” she asked.

Razer shook his head, “I’ll run an anonymiser program and
we’ll be untraceable.”

Xara sighed, “All right then let’s do this.”

The Wire, when you really thought about it, was just a giant
net linking all the system’s users together in a virtual community. Like in any
community, there is a lot of money spent, which flows in out of the net, all it
takes is someone to tap into the money flow and direct it to a real life bank
account and there is your money. That is the basic principle all member of the
VNI (Virtual Network Infiltrators) are taught when they are recruited. They are
also given codenames because knowing someone’s real name is a weakness. The VNI
had some of the brightest minds on the planet in their ranks. Some are even
rumoured to be smarter than those that came up with The Wire. Tyron is among
these, he had been involved with the making of a top secret project that would
earn the VNI billions of dollars. It was
a game that the VNI had inserted into the Wire that required players to buy
items in the game with real money, this would maximise their revenue, but the
only problem is that it’s illegal. Tyron had been with the VNI almost since it
had been founded. The Recruiter had singled him out for his unique ability to
hack into the Indo-American government network and successfully steal a large
sum of money. The VNI had refused to tell him how they had tracked him down but
he hadn’t ever wanted or needed to know.

Tyron was in the programming room monitoring the new game
that he had coded into the Wire. He was almost about to fall asleep when an
alert lit up his screen, someone had infiltrated into the background
datastreams and launched the game. He quickly opened up a live video stream
that would allow him to the view that game in the same way as the three
intruders. He was curious to see how the VNI had produced his code into a Wired
game. But then he froze; what if they were from the government and had somehow
caught wind of the illegal nature the game would be covering up? He decided it
would be best to load up his VNI Wire account so he could stop the intruders or
prevent them from uncovering the truth about the game.

LadyKhaos:
I loved this story, the characters are rich and seem to come alive. The happy ending made my heart sing, I will be read this again. But there are problems, like how Ace got his money? Or why her father always calls her “my child” like she is just another kid in his church and not his daughter? I ...

Emi:
This story is amazing! I love the plot, just hopping for more chapters soon!! The writing style is fabulus . The author of this novel did another amazing job! This novel has action, humor, little bit of romance and much more.